


Opening Day 2020

by Lady_in_Red



Category: Pitch (TV 2016)
Genre: Baseball, Developing Relationship, F/M, Inspired by Real Events, One Shot, Team Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:20:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25631947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_in_Red/pseuds/Lady_in_Red
Summary: Ginny makes her first Opening Day start in the much-delayed first game of the 2020 season.
Relationships: Ginny Baker/Mike Lawson
Comments: 10
Kudos: 112





	Opening Day 2020

**Author's Note:**

> So this was inspired by two things: the new Pitch on Hulu promo and the lengths that the MLB has gone to trying to make the empty stadiums feel less weird. Please note that Pitch has been running on BET lately, too. Give it a rewatch.

There’s something wrong with the crowd behind home plate.

Well, of course there is. They’re made of cardboard. Someone at MLB came up with the idea, or maybe it was NHL and MLB copied it. Ginny’s not sure, and she really doesn’t care. Some teams opted not to use cardboard standees in the seats behind home plate, others packed them with cardboard replicas of friends and family of the team and staff. Sometimes Ginny imagines the fans away anyway, and these days the thought of a crowd makes her chest tight. 

They piped in crowd noise too. Some tie-in with the MLB Ballpark app that Ginny pretended to understand but really didn’t care. It was weird, if she really thought about it, so she didn’t. 

Just focus on the ball in her hand. That’s all she has to do. And if she hands Madison Bumgarner a loss in his first start with the Diamondbacks, that wouldn’t suck. 

She’s deep into the fourth, both sides scoreless and the sun beating down on her unmercifully, when something catches her eye in the crowd. 

The sun glints off sunglasses. Real ones. Not cardboard.

And under those glasses, a smirk Ginny knows very well. Slightly burnt forearms, and an old, well-worn Padres jersey, not one of the new brown ones or the pinstripes she’s wearing today. 

Mike Lawson is in the stands, among the cardboard fans, so still she didn’t realize he was there for more than an hour. He must’ve conned someone into letting him help set up the crowd, and just never left, because he’s absolutely not supposed to be there. 

“Hey, mamí, you gonna throw?” Duarte calls from home plate. 

Ginny tears her gaze away from Mike, back to Livan crouching, waiting behind Starling Marte with his bat at the ready. 

She throws, but it’s Mike she sees, sprawled on a lounge chair in the sun, his face hidden beneath a ballcap. He catches her pitch, as always.

It was a risk, moving in together when the stay-at-home order went into effect, but Mike’s house had plenty of space for her to practice, unlike her condo. And really, hadn’t they waited long enough? Still, Ginny worried early on that they would irritate each other, or fight over silly things like who forgot to replace the toilet paper (him) or put an empty milk carton back in the fridge (her), and break up before they’d really gotten started.

But they made it through more than three months of enforced togetherness, 24/7, and Ginny only had to call Evelyn for a long bitch session about their men a few times. And here they are on the far side of the quarantine, back to work and still living together. She still can’t quite believe it. 

This season is her fourth, and only one has been truly normal. Her first was a media firestorm, started late and cut short by injury. Her second she had to baby her shoulder and bowed out before August. Only her third was normal, Spring Training straight through to the end, and it was the first without Lawson as her batterymate.

And yet he’s still here. Watching, as Marte gives it his best but strikes out. Ginny can hear Lawson’s voice in her head, warning not to count out her opponents, not to push herself too hard. Skip pulls her after she lets two score in the fifth, but the bullpen has it covered, and she still gets the win. 

Mike is waiting in the clubhouse, like he belongs there. None of the clubbies would ever kick him out. The man is royalty here, even without bringing home a title. 

She drops down beside him on a couch and pulls her ballcap off. She knows what he’s going to say before he opens his mouth, so she tries to beat him to the punch. “Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m dropping my shoulder.” 

Mike laughs, and reaches out to gently squeeze her shoulder. “Just on the fastball. Easy fix. Don’t throw it.”

Ginny groans. “Right. Sure. Whatever, old man.”

Mike grimaces. “I thought we agreed no more  _ old man _ .” 

She shrugs. Old habits are hard to break, especially here. “You agreed, not me.” 

The rest of the team flows around them, uncaring. When Ginny tried to announce their new status when they came together again for summer camp, Sonny told her bluntly that everyone knew and wanted no details, thank you very much. The promo video MLB requested filled in everyone else. 

The blowback she expected never really got any traction. Everyone had too much on their minds already, and the fans were so desperate for baseball they didn’t have much give a damn left for who Ginny was dating, even if it was her ex-captain. One site actually titled their article “FINALLY” like it had been a foregone conclusion for years. 

“How’d you get in the stands?” she asks. “You in trouble?”

“Trouble?” Mike scoffs. “Please. I own this town.” 

“Oh really?” Blip asks from his cubby. “I don’t see your name anywhere around here, Lawson.” 

Laughter echoes around the clubhouse, but it’s all good-natured. Some of these guys never played with Mike, but they’ve all seen him in action. They all know what he did for this club as a player, and what he still does in the front office. He should be in the bullpen, in the dugout. That he isn’t bothers her, but not enough to give him up. 

“You gonna keep this up all season, Lawson?” Dusty asks. “It’ll be like Where’s Waldo.” 

Mike grimaces. “I’m not wearing a damn striped hat.”

Ginny breaks out in giggles. “You should see your face.”

His scowl deepens, and Ginny snatches his hat off his head and leans in to press an impulsive kiss to his mouth. 

Someone behind them wolf whistles, and Ginny freezes. But then someone groans, and someone else laughs, and someone mutters, horrified, “Ugh, no, it’s like watching my mom and dad kiss.”

Ginny buries her face in Mike’s shoulder, realizing a second too late just how sweaty she is. 

“We’ve all seen your mom, Garcia,” Sonny pipes up, and the whole clubhouse erupts in laughter. 

No one’s looking at them anymore. She pulls back, noting the damp spot she’s left on his jersey. “I saw him, too. Pop. Did you do that?” She spotted him in the fifth, right before she got pulled. Bill Baker would have grumbled that putting him in the crowd nine years after his death was foolishness, and maybe it was, but there was just something about seeing him there.

“I couldn’t let you start with no one there to cheer you,” Mike says lightly, but she knows him far too well to think he doesn’t understand what his efforts today mean to her. Screw roses and jewelry, Lawson has gotten very good at giving her exactly what she needs. 

But she teases him anyway, because banter is what they do. “I didn’t hear anything, Lawson. You’re gonna have to be a little louder to get my attention.”

Mike smirks. “Oh, I can get your attention.” 

“Get a room,” someone grumbles, and Ginny is certain she’s going to be taking shit from the guys every time Mike shows up. But it’s not her fault that Mike’s front office job makes him part of the team bubble, while the WAGs are not. 

Mike’s shit-eating grin tells her that he knows exactly why the guys are bitter, and he doesn’t feel even a little bad about it. 

This is what she missed, while she and Mike were quarantined in his house. Their little bubble was amazing, even better than she’d hoped… but it wasn’t this. The game, more than any house, is her home. Pop had made sure of that, and living without it as spring passed and summer rolled on, felt wrong in a way that made her itchy and unsettled. 

Here, in the clubhouse, sweaty and rosin-scented, she feels more herself than she has in months. It won’t last. All these guys, all the people involved in a single game, traveling, interacting with new people, it probably won’t work for long. And then she’ll be back in her bubble with Mike. They haven’t talked about it, but neither suggested she move out when practice began again. 

That’s a question for later. For now, Ginny wants nothing more than to soak up every minute of this that she can. So she leans into Mike’s side, and joins the conversation when her teammates start razzing each other.


End file.
